District X-2011/09
One of the nicest Pattern contests in our district is held each year at the Radio Control Flyers Unlimited field just outside of Oakdale, California, at the Woodward Reservoir. It's a beautiful site and one of my favorite contests of the year. Don Atwood, a fierce Pattern competitor and all-around good guy, wrote the following summary of the contest. I hope you enjoy it. As always, I have more story than space in the column, so please go to our website at www.ama10.org to read more and see a lot of great pictures in full color.
Oakdale Pattern Shootout — Event Summary
Twenty-two Pattern contestants came together for the fifth annual Oakdale Pattern Shootout and enjoyed the field, great weather, great food, and a well-organized pattern get-together on the weekend of June 25–26. The CDs, Dick Belden and Chris Fitzsimmons, ran the contest and, as usual, did a great job.
The Oakdale flying field is located on the north side of the Woodward Reservoir, roughly 10 miles north of Oakdale. The facility has a long, wide runway that runs NW to SE to take advantage of the prevailing winds. The backdrop for flying is the California Central Valley rolling hills with the Sierras in the distance.
There are covered pit areas and a gravel parking lot with lots of room for parking, including huge motor homes and travel trailers. The pit is roughly half the length of the total runway and has work tables with plenty of room to move around, some bench areas, and loads of room for chairs and support equipment.
There were 22 contestants with entries in all five Pattern classes. A variety of airplanes flew and most were electric powered.
Competition format and scoring
For those unfamiliar with Pattern, competition is divided into classes: Sportsman, Intermediate, Advanced, Masters, and FAI/F3A. Classes have predefined maneuvers starting with Sportsman and getting increasingly difficult with each higher class up through Masters. FAI/F3A is an international class with maneuvers defined by the FAI competition committees.
The USA Pattern team is selected from the F3A competitors at the Nationals in Muncie, Indiana. The F3A World Championship is held every other year and moves to a different country each time. This year, the World Championship is in Muncie, just prior to the USA Nationals.
For a competitor, a typical contest consists of flying six rounds during two days. Contestants typically fly in front of two judges. Maneuvers are judged against a set of descriptions including any downgrades for that maneuver. Each maneuver has a K-factor associated with it, which represents the difficulty of the maneuver and is used as a multiplier for the score.
Each maneuver is judged on a 0–10 rating with 10 being perfect. The judge writes down the score for each maneuver on a score sheet. When scores are entered into the computer scoring software, the appropriate K-factor multiplier is applied and all maneuver scores are totaled to produce the contestant's score for the round. At the end of the contest, the best four of six round scores are totaled to determine the placings.
Contest results
- Sportsman:
- Jean Greear
- Lawrence Tougas
- Carlos Tripodi
- Intermediate:
- Chris Belden
- Advanced:
- Jacob Barocca
- Jarvis Johnson
- Dale Olstinske
- Masters:
- Jerry Budd
- Greg Frohreich
- Jon Carter
- FAI/F3A:
- Matt Kimbro
- Jim Kimbro
- Don Atwood
New models and highlights
Models for competition are released by the manufacturers or designed and built by competitors. This year, there were seven new models at the Oakdale contest. Highlights include:
- Jim Kimbro — electric-powered Silent Assassin (retro styling; most models use fixed landing gear, but Jim opted to go retro).
- Matt Kimbro — Peridot, a new design by longtime world-class pilot Wolfgang Matt, manufactured by Oxai.
- Kevin Sung — Spark Evo, manufactured by Krill Models; the wing features a step back in the leading edge (LE), supposedly to enhance snap rolls.
We are all looking forward to next year's Pattern contest at Oakdale. Thanks again to the Oakdale club for hosting the contest. We all certainly enjoyed it.
Don Atwood National Society of Radio Controlled Aerobatics Associate Vice President
Happy landings.
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
